In conventional tissue engineering applications, a key tenet is to develop scaffold materials that can match native tissue mechanical properties and stimulate stem cell differentiation for tissue regeneration.
Living bone is a composite of hard mineral nanoparticles (hydroxyapatite, HAp) and organic fibrous collagen with intricate nanoarchitectures that make up this tough, hard tissue. Past attempts have been made to simulate these nanostructures in synthetic materials. Despite some advances in the field, it is synthetically difficult to achieve the complex nanostructures. In materials science, the manner in which to mimic biological systems to design and fabricate bio-inspired bulk materials remains a grand challenge.
The complex nanostructures of nature are considered essential for the design of tough biomimetic materials. However, biomimetic materials of the future do not necessarily mimic the exact tissue or organ-like complex nanostructures. Instead, by understanding and incorporating the extremely efficient mechanisms of fracture resistance developed by nature, the materials will be bio-inspired in function but not necessarily in shape.
Therefore, there is a need in the art for robust bio-inspired materials for the construction of hybrid materials with well-defined nanostructures that can covalently bond to inorganic nanoparticles on a molecular scale, allowing the inorganic particles to deform elastically on a limited scale, which allow for better mechanical properties, especially fracture toughness. These nanostructures allow the bulk materials to possess the mechanical properties of natural hybrids while simultaneously maintaining the desired bioactivity of purely inorganic materials, resulting in the benefit of better mechanical properties with increased bioactivity.
The present invention utilizes well-defined nanostructures formed through the sol-gel process using well-designed single-component molecular precursor. The new silica-based scaffold materials support stem cell growth and differentiation for bone tissue engineering. The present invention provides a hybrid bioactive glass with increased mechanical properties, such as increased toughness, while maintaining bioactivity, especially for bone and teeth applications.